say nope to tropes

on 31/12/2016

happy new years! sober up, and let’s dive into it.

saw a movie recently, lucy (2014). not great. but it gave me an idea for a new post. i thought i would throw out some of the well worn sci fi tropes, and we could all have a laugh. i’m probably guilty of some of em, but here’s the ones i find most obvious. add to the list, if you feel the urge. in no particular order things that irritate even the most passive nerd….

learning a language in a day. this one drives me nuts. ok, so you want you character to seem super smart. fine, but an evening of watching tv, or a few moments of the flickering of a monitor with internet access is not enough to imply that a person learned an entire language, nuances and all, between scenes. ok, there’s an exemption from the rule….. if it’s an AI, i think we can believe someone downloaded something. but a meat person watching sitcoms is gonna be at it for a while before they can talk pretty like me.

people seeing data flying in front of them. i get it, you want to show your character ‘gets it’ on a fundamental level, and maybe at first it seemed cool, but as time goes on, this seems like a lazy use of vfx. in the matrix, is was part of the style. and it should have stopped there, imo.

consciousness uploading. this is one of my least favourites and has always bugged the bejesus out of me. congratulations, you’ve built a device that can somehow read brains like fortune cookies. huge accomplishment. say you even built a computer that can store them, and remodel a brain out of the results. aside from the fact that this is not enough to create a model of a brain from, it’s not the same thing as the person you ‘downloaded’ them from. and even if it was, it’s just a copy. so, why do we see this as some sort of sci fi way to cheat death, and achieve immortality? a copy of my brain is no more my soul than a jpg photo is my body. it’s lazy. the exception is the black mirror episode ‘white christmas’.

intelligence drugs. this one is one the edge, cause i kinda think it could happen. you pop a pill, cut to a montage of particles exploding around brain cells, and you can pass the big exam. i mean, if you were paying attention in class in the least. what makes less sense is you pop a different pill, and suddenly you know things you didn’t know in the first place, and maybe you can even manipulate matter a little. turn invisible? basically, scifi drugs make you a jedi. and maybe that’s cause we haven’t come up with stuff cooler than jedis lately.

overuse of wormholes. i know this isn’t a fake one, that the theory of wormholes is out there, and quite possible. but if i see one more ‘science guy’ dumb it down for someone on the marine crew by pushing a pencil through a piece of paper, i’m gonna lose it.

ok, rant over, check it out! it’s the grins!

soon, i’m gonna make buttons of these, and send them to my fans as a little ‘thanks’ . patreon patrons will get first bite, then eventually up for sale, but like, super cheap. putting a toe in on this whole ‘consumerism’ thing. come on, support a fella!

Discussion (10) ¬

*Giggles* I always did love Smiley the Psychotic Button! Okay, sooo…I may be borderline guilty of the language-learning trope in writing. I do have a character that learns a language quickly, but even though they are not AI they are VERY not normal. And they learn through interaction, not info feeds. I won’t apologize until the critics hate it!

The trope I choose has been discussed here before: Sex robots. All that technological advancement just so a man can stick his dick in the dishwasher. In my day, that’s what wives were for!

i didn’t know you were writing something! very cool. let me know when it’s done. and i think there’s a way to use tropes, but you have to be aware that it can easily be a trap, too. the trick is to not use them as plot spackle, or just something that moves the story along at the cost of your authentic vibe. and by that, all i mean is that when i see stuff like that, i can almost hear the producer saying ‘i don’t know, she’s super smart, boom, she can read hieroglyphs now. let’s keep this trainwreck moving people!’

if i can recall, i think the 5th element, for all it’s many, MANY faults, handled that alright. new being, basically just born, but super smart. ok, whatever, but she speaks like a baby. she repeats phrases, and doesn’t seem too sure of the syntax. then again, it was probably just an accident cause they were having fun letting milla act like a simpleton. and that’s the only time i am likely to reference the 5th element in a positive light.

as for sex bots, i totally agree. again, an example of a movie that did it somewhat well, was ex machina. which is to say, it worked cause *spoiler alert* it didn’t work, and the AI was being manipulative. but that was the point. create something with free will, and maybe it won’t want to make it’s existence about servicing your genitals. or you could just not give it a brain, and still bang it. in my day, that’s what stupid people were for! haha

Yeah, I’m actually writing a bunch of books. It’s the only thing I’m pretty good at. One day I might even finish one! True to writer curses everywhere, I am over forty thousand words in (about halfway) and ready to abandon the one I’ve worked on the longest. My mantra is “If Twilight and 50 Shades saw the light of day, you can be rich and famous for GOOD writing.”

haha, it’s not a bad thought. unless what made them successful was how bad they are. i think bad writing, or to be more clear, simple writing, speaks to simple people. and there’s more of them out there. i heard a little bout those authors, and what it seemed like they had, more than anything, was good marketing. you gotta get some of that. haha

People Seeing Data Flying Probably not what you meant, but I spent about a month doing testing on a project where I had to read the logs to see whether or not things were working right. I rather quickly got to the point where I could scroll through the text at a far faster rate than I could legitimately read, but had learned the “normal” pattern to the point that the “abnormal” stood out like a sore thumb. Instead of having to read the whole blithering log file, I just skimmed until I hit a visual glitch. Worked fine, didn’t miss any problems, took a whole lot less time, and no, I wasn’t focusing on ‘ERROR’ versus ‘WARNING’. I just knew what normal ops looked like in the log, so even when it wasn’t an obvious logged error, I knew when something wasn’t right.

Intelligence Drugs Gotta agree with you there. Popping a pill and suddenly you know Kung Fu? Nope. Popping a pill and suddenly all the stuff you’ve been reading and hearing clicks for you into an understandable whole? Maybe. Popping a pill and suddenly you can think far better than you ever have before? See Modafinil, at least there’s anecdotal evidence, but I don’t think there’ve been any double-blind studies.

i think what you’re describing is what they were going for. some enhanced pattern recognition, where the character can pick things out in a way normal people can’t. but then in movies or shows, it ends up being a character seeing words, or streams of data floating around their heads, and they pick them out of mid air like tom cruise in minority report. in lucy, it was the character seeing cel phone signals, as she sorted through them like they were loose threads.
i’ve never heard of Modafinil. no doubt it’s a variation on study drugs, which i’ve heard just make it easier to concentrate, but i’ve also heard they’re just a rebranding of meth. i don’t have any experience with them. i did abuse caffeine in college. and what i found out about staying up for 4 days straight is that you think you’re doing something great and productive, and the reality is that you produce garbage.

Ever seen a movie called Stranger Than Fiction? I’m THAT kind of writer. I’m sure I am absolutely nobody’s dream project. My works will probably languish self-published on Amazon until after I die penniless, then my kids can live on my sudden and unexplained rise in popularity. *Sighs dramatically and flops on a fainting couch*

i have seen that, as chance would have it.and i’m not really a will ferrel fan, but i liked that one.

and yeah, i can imagine that. being unappreciated in ones on lifetime? look who you’re telling. i write and draw a comic for a handful of people. but honestly, it’s not as much for who reads it. it’s just something i need to get out of me. plus, i feel pretty productive, and it’s getting better, and easier, so that’s proof enough that keeping it going is a good idea.

feel free to share a link. maybe someone here reading this is an undercover talent scout, looking for the next big thing. in which case, make me famous too! stingy bastard!

No links. For all that I enjoy technology, I still prefer pencil and paper for my world building. However, I do fully intend on dragging the handful of people who have been kind and decent to me into the limelight if I ever gain noteriety! You are one of those I will gladly promote!